JPG: Stories: Photo Essay: There's More There Than Meet The Eyes...

There's More There Than Meet The Eyes...

By Winston D. Munnings

24 May 2009

When my wife brought this Hybrid home two weeks ago from an Orchid Show, it was just another plant. Nothing really fantastic to look at, you might say. Two of the flowers were struggling to open with three additional buds swollen, but not quite ready to appear on the scene as did their two older siblings.

As the days progressed, however, and with some tender loving care from Dr. Orchid (my wife Jennifer), things were beginning to look up for this Leoliocattleya. Needless to say, my creative juices were beginning to take flight.

In case you're interested, Leoliocattleya is an artificial hybrid of orchids from Laelia and Cattleya, its parent genera. According to Wikipedia encyclopedia, "...Laelia is a small genus of 11 species and Cattleya is a genus of 42 species of orchids from Costa Rica to tropical South America..." (The scientific name of this particular orchid, however, is: Laeliocattleya Exotic Smile 'Spring Sensation' and its genus record number is: #: gw2005027)

Now back to the short story!

Again, this scrawny looking little plant was not an attractive candidate to display as I've been able to show here. At least I did not think so initially. But, having learned how to see beyond the physical (or the obvious) together with the challenge to come up with something you could hail as a 'creative piece of work' causes you to look, and think, differently about your subject ... any subject.

In other words, I gave myself a challenge to turn this ugly orchid duckling into a pictorial beauty that would cause someone (somewhere) to say "wow" when viewing this photo essay.

To accomplish just that, I spent hours studying this plant examining it through my viewfinder while looking at every conceivable angle that might give me a little more creative edge than just the ordinary. Thank God for digital technology as I would have spent a fortune if I was shooting with film given the amount of deletes or throw-a-ways in order to come up with this array of images.

Last year (April 23, 2008) I wrote a brief for JPMagazine Online under the title: Many Look, But Few Can Truly See. Check it out >> http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/4004.